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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177841">The Cuddle Pile Rolls As A Roaring Lion, Seeking Whom It May Devour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talik_Sanis/pseuds/Talik_Sanis'>Talik_Sanis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Miraculous Crackfics [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Is a Little Shit, Akumatized Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Angst, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Crack, Gabriel Agreste is not a psychopath, Happy Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, He just plays one on TV, Non-Consensual Cuddling, Plagg is a Little Shit (Miraculous Ladybug), Sad Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, The World's Largest Cuddle Orgy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:28:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177841</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talik_Sanis/pseuds/Talik_Sanis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Chat Noir Is akumatized and sets out to satisfy every one of his depraved and base desires.  </p><p>The cuddle pile grows. It hungers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir &amp; Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Miraculous Crackfics [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755580</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>169</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Cuddle Pile Rolls As A Roaring Lion, Seeking Whom It May Devour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite ample evidence to the contrary that would be sufficient to prove the case to the highest standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” if ever the matter was put to a jury trial, Gabriel Agreste did not suffer from psychopathy.</p><p>He was entirely <em>capable</em> of feeling empathy.</p><p>Just not very strongly or often.</p><p>However a keen understanding of the human condition was necessary for him to identify the most viable human fodder for his schemes and render away the emotional fat from the lean muscle of pain that was so delicious in its complex mingling of savoury flavours.</p><p>The metaphor may have been slightly strained, but it was after 20:00 and he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, skipping out on the evening meal that Nathalie had insisted that he share with Adrien tonight for... some reason that really couldn't have been all that important.</p><p>He was hungry and cranky. Sue him.</p><p>Perhaps that would account for the results of his latest attempt at akumatization.</p><p>The worst akuma were produced by fleeting desires and ephemeral concerns.</p><p>True, deep, lasting, <em>scarring</em> pain was the choicest meat.</p><p>Mm. Choice meat. Oh, did they have any garlic butter in the kitchen?</p><p>His stomach grumbled.</p><p>
  <em>Focus, Gabriel. </em>
</p><p>Not the question to ask when this veritable <em>feast</em> of pain was available to him as he stood before his lair's iris to toss out an akuma. It flitted off through the wide butterfly window that was an indulgence that he had written off as a business expense.</p><p>Ah. Dodging taxes.</p><p>It was good to be evil.</p><p>The little Papillon fluttered its way through Paris and hit its oh-so-temptingly gorgeous target.</p><p>Hawkmoth winced. Phrasing. That was probably not the way that a middle-aged man should be thinking about a pubescent somewhat effeminate boy that he was going to corrupt and bend to his perverse whims...</p><p>Egh.</p><p>Gabriel slapped his cheeks, gloved hands slick against his helmet.</p><p><em>Chat Blanc</em> would be his greatest creation.</p><p>Yes. Good. Focus.</p><p>The boy sat with his legs dangling over the side of a building, kicking absently at the brickwork, while he slicked the back of his hand across his teary eyes and drippy nose, shoulders rocking in great heaves. A tattered blue... scarf, quite well-made too, lay threadbare and rent in his hands.</p><p>Poor little lost kitten.</p><p>Chat Noir himself was bereft and depressed, all alone without his lady and suffering from ... a complete absence of all physical affection and adult male affirmation in his life, was it?</p><p>He could work with that.</p><p>Gabriel could turn him into a masterwork by perverting him into one of his akuma, offering to satisfy the touch-starved boy's longing for physical contact.</p><p>He smiled in glee at the prospect of <em>taking</em> this poor, inno-</p><p>
  <em>Oh, god!</em>
</p><p>No. T-there was nothing sexual about using his little Papillon to enter a teena--</p><p>
  <em>Stop it Gabriel!</em>
</p><p>He was just hungry, and needed some choice mea-</p><p>
  <em>OH, GOD! </em>
</p><p>“Akumatize him already!” Hawkmoth screamed into his hands.</p><p>And, heeding its master's command, the Akuma dove into Chat Noir's blue scarf without the teary-eyed boy ever even seeing it, though Gabriel was blinded by an inexplicable flash of neon green light that throbbed in his head and clashed horribly with the bubbling purple-black wave that rolled over Chat Noir's body.</p><p>Maybe it was his distracted near-weeping; maybe it was his hunger; maybe it was some unknown factor, but immediately, it became obvious that something was wrong with the interplay of emotions. It was like a stoplight had changed and an entire fleet of cars had jammed on their brakes at the last minute, piling up in a mass of twisted metal.</p><p>Loneliness became indignation; loathing, yearning; resignation, defiance; hatred, love. And everything in-between was a slurry of emotion that caused them all to mingle. The swirl of contradiction, as if there were two minds completely at war, had his stomach clenching as if he'd held his nose and been forced to suck down milk and orange juice mixed together.</p><p>The akuma scrabbled for purchase on the sheer ice wall of a glacier, the shifting sands of a beach, radiating heat in the summer sun, and an oil slick all at once.</p><p>And a voice split his brain, and ice-pick into his skull, piercing and nasally.</p><p>It <em>cackled</em>.</p><p>There was a pungent odour in his nose that set him retching. It smelled vaguely like ... stinky cheese?</p><p>Then, the akuma was complete.</p><p>How? They hadn't come to an agreement.</p><p>And <em>what</em> it actually was ... was unclear.</p><p>“<em>Chat Blanc</em>?” Hawkmoth offered in a tentative mental whisper, trying to coax out the cat's response. The mental image projected by the creature's self-perception was not at all what he had expected. Rather than a palate-swap of Chat Noir it was-</p><p>"That name sucks. I'm not calling myself that."</p><p>
  <em>What the hell?</em>
</p><p>“You don't have a choice in the matter,” Gabriel fumed, uncharacteristically irate over the lingering stink of Camembert in his nose. Actually, come to think of it, the odour always seemed to follow his son around too. “<em>I </em>am the designer here!”</p><p>“You can call me <em>Cuddle Kitten.</em>”</p><p>Gabriel nearly choked, fumbling with his cane. "I- that is not an acceptable name whatsoever! I will not have you tarnishing my reputation with so ridiculous an appellation."</p><p>"Sure thing, Mr. <em>The Bubbler.</em>"</p><p>Hawkmoth shook a disparaging finger at his butterfly window.</p><p>"That is an inexcusably disrespectful attitude to adopt, young man," he scolded to bring the child back in line. Surely this creature would be cowed by a firm hand.</p><p>"Hard cheese, helmet head."</p><p>
  <em>Helmet head?</em>
</p><p>No matter. While straightening his suit jacket and smoothing wrinkles from the edges of his shoulders, Hawkmoth attempted to compose himself. However frustrating a child this creature might be, he was still an akumatized miraculous holder. One could not get lost in the weeds when the commingling of akuma and miraculous was at his fingertips and Ladybug was bereft of her dear partner.</p><p>"You know what?” he relented, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. “I don't care what you call yourself. Just get me your and Ladybug's Miraculouses in exchange for your... cuddling powers?"</p><p>Were those the abilities that this annoying creature ended up with? Not exactly the power of destruction unbound as he had intended, but he'd had success with “stupid akuma” in the past.</p><p>"I think that should be <em>Miraculi</em>."</p><p>Oh, that was it! The nerve!</p><p>"Don't you try to correct my manner of speech you – you illiterate <em>child</em>," he spat, shaking his fist at the Parisian skyline like Doctor Doom cursing Reed Richards.</p><p>"Hey!” came the squawking retort, resounding in Gabriel's skull as if it was reverberating off the metal plates of his helmeted head. “I read at a university level."</p><p>To defy the pain and the filthy upstart urchin, he sneered, "That's not a surprise given that most university students don't even know what a noun is."</p><p>"That's public education for you."</p><p>Hawkmoth threw his arms into the air. At last the recalcitrant touch-starved feline was making sense! <em>Someone</em> finally understood the dangers of public education.<br/>
<br/>
"I know, right?! But just try telling that to my- wait!” His cane chopped the air to cut through the bullshit that was piling up due to this feline clearly being a stray who had never been litter-box trained. “We're getting off track here. Get me the ... muraculi of Ladybug and Chat Noir... who is <em>you</em>."</p><p>Blasted child almost had him forgetting that for a moment. Was it any wonder that he couldn't spend time with Adrien? He didn't know how to deal with kids.</p><p>"Yeah, see, still not going to be doing that."</p><p>"<em>Excuse</em> <em>me!</em>?" Gabriel barked. All the lines of age and frustration, which he had crafted meticulously to inspire the ominous miasma that pervaded every room into which he walked, fell away as his face slacked with shock.</p><p>"You heard me, gramps.” A yawn reverberated through their psychic connection as Hawkmoth tried and failed to conjure forth the electrical fire that he used to corral and impel wayward akuma.</p><p>His teeth clenched with outrage, the yawn only intensifying.</p><p>“I just feel like taking a nap in the sun."</p><p>"That is not why I gave you your powers!" Gabriel raged while striding up to the wide butterfly iris and smacking his cane against its rungs as if that would do anything other than assuage his frustration while exacerbating his existing headache.</p><p>"I kinda think that it is. You promised me affection. I want cuddles and naps with everyone in my school. It's going to be, like, a cuddle <em>orgy</em>. In a sunbeam."</p><p>"Now you listen here. You will do as I say or I will take you out of schoo– I mean take away your- your... cuddle powers!"</p><p>"Wow.” The squeakiness of his voice increased. “You sound <em>just</em> like my father. He won't let anyone hug me either."</p><p>"Well, your father sounds <em>just</em> like an eminently reasonable man who only wants what's best for you!"</p><p>"Best for his image, you mean."</p><p>"That's the same thing,” Hawkmoth insisted because it absolutely was; a rarified and refined image for the company would result in the best possible future for <strike>him</strike> his son. “Happy wife; happy life. Satisfied father... no... bother."</p><p>"You just made that up."</p><p>"No I didn't."</p><p>"You absolutely did."</p><p>"It's a thing that people say."</p><p>There was a great scoffing laugh through the telepathic link that almost seemed to oscillate between two voices commingled, one soft and deferential while the other was shrieking and demonic.</p><p>"Yeah, sure,” the akuma chortled. “Maybe after you get Mayura to say it too."</p><p>Hawkmoth slowly closed his flip phone (he had a retro style), cutting off Nathalie's question: "Sir, why do you want me to say satisf-"</p><p>"I would never stoop to such a tactic,” Gabriel assured, lip quivering lightly as he cast a furtive glance around the room. “It would be unbecoming of a man of my breeding and status."</p><p>"Yeah. That sounds exactly like something my father would say."</p><p>"I'm liking your father more and more. You must be a tremendous disappointment to him."</p><p>"I know.” The reply was so soft, and Gabriel clutched at his cane as he felt the boy smile to keep from crying. “He can't stand me- can barely bring himself to <em>look</em> at me since mom ... left because he wishes that it had been me who died."</p><p>Oh, that was ... blunt.</p><p>Perhaps he had misjudged this boy and strange as it may have been, he felt a swelling of something that a generous human being might have considered tangentially related to an approximation of a feeling akin to a sentiment reminiscent of a parallel to an analogy for empathy.</p><p>Metaphorically speaking, of course.</p><p>“And sometimes... I wish that too. Then he and mom would be happy.”</p><p>Gabriel didn't like this tangential relation to an approximation of a feeling akin to a sentiment reminiscent of a parallel to an analogy for empathy.</p><p>Not one bit.</p><p>Literally.</p><p>“Nobody wants me here anyways.”</p><p>"It- it's probably just that he doesn't know how to cope with his own loss," Gabriel tried to defend this very bad father who was absolutely nothing like himself because he was a candidate for “father of the year” surely, with all of the enriching extracurricular activities he assigned his son.</p><p>"It wouldn't be so bad if he loved me. Even if he ignored me."</p><p>Now the emotions were clear. The sheer broken anguish and self-loathing – the belief that Chat Noir wasn't worthy of being loved and so deserved this treatment from his father – was nearly enough to stagger him.</p><p>It was so... raw. Like a dentist was splitting each one of his teeth in turn without anaesthetic.</p><p>Might... might Adrien feel the same way of him?</p><p>Everything that he had done was for his family, though; his son did deserve love from someone... tender, like his wife. Gabriel could give him that only by way of the women that they both loved.</p><p>Planning out Adrien's future was ... was <em>his</em> way of showing that he cared enough to be invested in his life. Hadn't enlisting that psychotic mythomaniacal harpy Lila to spy on his son and report back anything that might be a danger to his well-being and future been proof of his love?</p><p>Granted he “super-villained” with a little more relish than was strictly necessary, but everyone was entitled to have some fun at work every now and then.</p><p>Except his employees.</p><p>Or his son.</p><p>But he repeated himself.</p><p>...</p><p>
  <em>Oh...</em>
</p><p>"Simply because he doesn't know how to express his emotions,” Gabriel began haltingly through their telepathic link, turning to rest his back against the wall of his lair and stare at the ceiling, “does not mean that he merely thinks of you as an empl- I, <em>uh</em>. I mean, it does not mean that he doesn't love you."<br/>
<br/>
"No, but the fact that he's locked me up and won't even <em>hug</em> me to the point that I got akumatized over how touch-starved I am means that he doesn't love me."</p><p>"I- I don't..."</p><p>When was the last time that he had hugged Adrien?</p><p>When was the last time that he had touched Adrien?<br/>
<br/>
Hell, when was the last time that he had <em>seen</em> Adrien other than through Nathalie's tablet?</p><p>He- he couldn't remember.</p><p>Did Adrien feel the same way?</p><p>Was he a... <em>bad</em> father?</p><p>...</p><p>No.</p><p>Hawkmoth rose from the wall, standing tall, unstooped and unbowed.</p><p><em>No!</em> Gabriel Agreste was not a bad <em>anything</em>!</p><p>If there was something that he couldn't do, then he had pawns, peons, toadies, lackeys, servants, employees, proxies, or subordinate super villains to do for him.</p><p>"Enough of this, <em>Cuddle Kitten</em>! You know that I have a mission for you."</p><p>"Oh, yeah. This should be good."</p><p>"In exchange for your powers, you have one objective above all else."</p><p>"And what's that? The Miraculi again?" the troublesome feline sighed through their link, sounding as if he was on the verge of falling asleep.</p><p>"No. You are going to make certain that Adrien Agreste gets all the physical affection that he needs to develop into an emotionally-stable and respectable member of society unlike <em>you</em>."</p><p>There was only silence, the emotional threads connecting them a strange and incoherent blur like he'd tangled up a thousand different strands while sewing, all conflict and uncertainty and ugly random patterns.</p><p>"Once you've done so and you've slacked your sick, twisted lust for cuddles, we can discuss the miraculous. Do you accept my new terms?"</p><p>Then, he could only feel joy.</p><p>"Yeah. <em>That</em> I can do."</p><p>A strange tingle worked its way up Hawkmoth's spine. Thousands of little spider legs danced on his vertebrae. Crawled under his skin.</p><p>He shuddered despite himself.</p>
<hr/><p>The desolate ruins of Paris, a city of ghosts crisscrossed with empty streets like arteries drained of their lifeblood, stretched out before Ladybug. Her face was a blasted out ruin of exhaustion.</p><p>From her rooftop command center and using Max and the Horse Miraculous to relay information, she coordinated the battle that had been raging for what seemed like months, but really was only a few days. To her left, a half-dozen heroes in myriad colours and costumes sparred: the backups. Every Miraculous had been put into circulation, and the new wielders needed training before they were ... torn apart.</p><p>She refused to bite her lip; she had to project confidence and calm to assuage people's fears – to pretend that she thought that they could <em>win</em>.</p><p>She turned her attention away from – from her men and women. Her troops. Her... pawns on the chessboard that was the remains of Paris. They were no longer her friends because she couldn't think about them like that anymore. She didn't have the luxury.</p><p>The map of Paris on the table before her was mostly a crossed out red blur. College Francois Dupont was now added to the spreading tide of red, like a river of blood that washed away their city – their home.</p><p>Rena had been lost with their school. What she wouldn't give to see her friend again.</p><p>Now she truly knew that she couldn't have friends.</p><p>“Ladybug?”</p><p>When she turned, Viperion stood at attention. His costume had been rent apart in several places, and his hair was greasy and matted with sweat as he puffed, eyes brimming with regret and sorrow.</p><p>“Who is it now?” Ladybug asked, setting her lips tight.</p><p>“Ryuuko.” Luka's jaw twitched. “It got Ryuuko this time.”</p><p>“You couldn't save her?” It might have sounded like an accusation, but she knew that her lieutenant – a very poor substitute for Chat Noir, she had learned, and how she missed her- her <em>kitty</em> – was well aware that it was a desperate cry for help and a lament that she couldn't express save through anger and dull recrimination.</p><p>“Three hundred and sixteen second chances,” he said as if the word was a curse. “There- there was no hope.”</p><p>He meant, of course, that there was no hope for any of them.</p><p>The first losses had caused her to swear. Now, she merely walked over to her casualty list and deployment map and crossed out her ... her soldier's name. Without the Dragon, they would have to withdraw from the block surrounding the mayor's office.</p><p>Together with Viperion, she turned to the horizon and stared out at what had once been her city.</p><p>“God help us,” Ladybug's voice quivered for a moment.</p><p>For in the distance, the self-sustaining cuddle pile rolled through the streets of Paris, seeking whom it could devour.</p><p>In its midst, a massive anthropomorphic black cat wearing a very familiar blue scarf was swimming through the writhing mass of cuddling bodies, snuggling up to the Dragon in his arms. He was rubbing his furry cheek and butting the top of his head into Ryuuko's face as she rolled her eyes and gave him a reciprocal squeeze.</p><p>Ladybug shuddered at the deep, hungry purr that echoed through the canyon of buildings.</p><p>No hope.</p><p>“God help us all.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Don't worry. Once Gabriel Agreste got caught up in the cuddle-pile, he recalled his Akuma and a sated Adrien Agreste and a thoroughly annoyed Plagg were defused. </p><p>Also, the cuddle-pile is self-sustaining. No worries about dehydration, starvation, or any other bodily needs or functions. </p><p>Because crack.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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